IN PARTNERSHIP WITH AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH FASHION Tommy Roberts Interviewed by Anna Dyke C1046/12 IMPORTANT Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 [0]20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Title Page Ref. No.: C1046/12/01-39 Wav file Refs.: Collection title: Oral History of British Fashion Interviewee’s surname: Roberts Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Thomas Stephen Sex: Male Occupation: Boutique Owner Date of birth: 1942 Mother’s occupation: Housewife Father’s occupation: Businessman Date(s) of recording and tracks (from-to): 01.08.2005 (track 1-8), 19.08.2005 (track 9-13), 30.08.2005 (14-21), 12.09.05 (track 22-32), 21.09.05 (track 32-39) Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Dover; except 19.08.05 at Interviewee’s shop, Hackney Name of interviewer: Anna Dyke Type of recorder: Marantz PMD660 Total no. of tracks: 39 Recording Format: Wav 16bit 48khz Mono or stereo: Stereo Burned to DVD(s) Duration: 16 hours 25 minutes Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: Interview finished, full clearance given. Interviewer’s comments: Background noise from interviewee’s shop/customers 19.08.05 Tommy Roberts Page 1 C1046/12/01 [Track 1] Okay, are you ready? Okay. Okay, so it’s the first of August 2005. And, can you tell me your full name? My name is Thomas Stephen Roberts. I was born in 1942, because my mother was evacuated to Bath in Somerset and there’s a birth certificate, I think it’s for Bath in Somerset, but she didn’t like evacuation so we went back to London and I lived with my grandparents who’d been bombed out, in Forest Hill. And they’d been re-housed in Allerford Road, Bellingham and that’s where I lived for about the first four years of my life. And, what can I remember from that? Course, it is a London suburb, but even in those days it, you know, it wasn’t sort of the end of the, the beginning of the twentieth century, but even in those days like the Ravensbourne River run at, along at the end of the road and it wasn’t so built up. But of course, they built all those estates just before the war, McAlpine’s had built Downham Estate and Bellingham Estate. All the people from Rotherhithe and everything to go and live there. So anyone round there, really, you’ll find that they all come from Bermondsey or Rotherhithe, but where we come from, I’m not quite – Lambeth, Lambeth, my grandmother. And, few memories, I can remember going down into the Anderson shelter at the back of the garden, I can remember thousand bomber raid going above, I can remember all the Italian prisoners-of-war singing songs of, sort of ‘Finiculi, Finicula’ and walking up the road with their shovels on their backs. I can remember things like that from the war. And then my – now, my mother didn’t go to work, she looked after me. My grandparents, as I say, lived downstairs. And then my father, I can remember my father coming back from leave in about forty-five, but he had to go back again to Palestine. He didn’t leave in forty… ‘cos of the troubles there, you know, in Palestine. You know, British mandate and whatever, and Israel’s… so there was problems there, so he didn’t actually come out till I think the middle of 1946. And, well just stop for a second, I’m just trying to think. My flow’s stopped. Could I, I’d like to go back over lots of that stuff. Tommy Roberts Page 2 C1046/12/01 Yes. Could I ask a few details on the way? Yes, oh please do Anna, yeah I’m very delighted. Yeah that’s what it’s… yeah, carry on. So your name’s obviously Thomas, but when did you… Thomas Roberts is a funny tradition, there’s lots of, if you go out and you start to look at the phone… there’s lots of Thomas Roberts, it’s a traditional name. Welsh, of course, Roberts. And I think my father was, I was a Thomas Stephen Roberts, my father was Thomas George Roberts, his father before him was a Thomas Roberts and his father before him was Thomas Roberts! And so it went on, and that’s how it became Thomas Roberts. I think the George came ‘cos my grandfather’s first name was George, and that’s how I got, you know that’s how it was. Yeah. So when did you start to go by the name of Tommy? …Fact I didn’t really, you see I think at the beginning it was Tom, and then I suppose sort of when I was about eight years old and you know, Tommy came up then. But I think originally it was Tom. Yeah. So would your parents have shortened it for you? No, they didn’t call me Thomas. Tom – ah yeah, I think my father would be Tommy. Tom – no, father called me Tom and my mother called me Tommy. ‘Tommy, what are you doing?’ So, that kind of thing. That’s how I think that came about. And at school, did you call yourself Tommy? Well I wouldn’t, it was only what other children called me really wasn’t it? They called me lots of things, not only Tommy. Tommy Roberts Page 3 C1046/12/01 And when you left school and you became a professional, what made you decide to call yourself Tommy rather than Thomas? I think it just, that people, you know that more people called me Tommy than there was Tom. But still people called me Tom. But I suppose, when I wrote, wrote my name, I always wrote it T-O-double M-I-E. Perhaps for some, I suppose it’s being a bit, a bit facetious, I don’t know really, but I wrote it T-double O-M-I-E. It’s a sort of feminine ending? Yeah, I suppose it might be, that’s right, yeah. But just a sort of quirk really. Sometimes I’d write it T-double O-M-Y. You know, I suppose it’s a bit liquid, the name. [laughs] Not that I’ve gone – I haven’t got through life with a load of aliases and you know, different names and different families [laughs] and things like that, it’s not that, it’s just that I always, yeah I suppose I always fancied being a bit more fanciful. That’s what it was I think, yes. But what does it say on your passport? Thomas. Mm, mm. Yeah. And, what was your mother’s name? Maree, Marie. And I think that comes from my grandfather being a cavalryman in the First World War, he’d been a regular before the First World War, he’d been a cavalryman. You know, the cavalry, horses. He always understood horses and things. And I think he could have been in France in the First World War. When his daughter come along in 1922, I think Marie Blanche Gibson, ‘cos his name was Gibson. And he was the Gibsons. They were a kind of – no-one never seemed to do a proper day’s work. They were gamblers, horse racing, on the stage a bit, things like that, yeah, the Gibsons. What d’you mean by ‘on the stage’? Tommy Roberts Page 4 C1046/12/01 Well, one of the daughter’s married someone on the stage and they came from Brixton and if you look, a lot of stage people lived in Brixton – there’s Brixton Hill… Brixton was a kind of theatrical place. I think Islington as well as bit, but Brixton was a theatrical… you know, where a lot of people would be in the music hall and places like that. Mm. And there’d be a fringe of people outside there getting their living off of those people, things, you know there might be kind of people with a carriage, you know like taking them to work, helping them with the things, selling ‘em things – it was a more liberal kind of, people could kind of scratch a living being round music hall artistes and people like that. Yeah, all different things. D’you know why there was this concentration in Brixton? I don’t know why, I think there’s a couple of big stars moved, lived there and there was other areas of London, you know, I don’t think Dan Leno and people like that, they lived elsewhere, I think in north London, but Marie Lloyd I think – d’you know I can’t remember now, I think she lived in Camden Town, I think she lived sort of round there really, I can’t remember. But there were definitely like Brixton, well Brixton Hill of course it was rather grand, it was a very wide road and if you look, the few houses that remain, they lay very far back off of Brixton, it was a big wide road and it was [inaudible] road and it was where like bankers for the City, you know I think when it was first built, 1840s, 1850s you know, they would go home there, the carriage would go home and of course, early on you had an omnibus service, horse drawn bus service as well.